Gen Z is now making up 1 / 4 of the worldwide workforce, however the brand new foundational demographic of the office is hardly a monolith. Toto Wolff, CEO and group principal of Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formulation 1 Crew, believes it’s unfair to make assumptions about your complete era’s working habits.
Wolff is aware of first hand what it seems to be wish to work with Gen Z workers. Initially of the 2025 F1 season—and following the departure of veteran driver Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari—Mercedes up to date its driver lineup, tapping 18-year-old Italian rookie Kimi Antonelli to affix the extra seasoned 27-year-old Briton George Russell. Mercedes, which has received eight Constructors’ Championships and 9 Drivers’ Championships, introduced on Wednesday the group would follow the pairing for the 2026 season.
Whereas the drivers might share a youthfulness that places them each within the Gen Z bucket, Wolff mentioned working with the pair helped him see the era as having a mess of skillsets and desires.
“I’ve two very completely different drivers: a younger English gentleman and an Italian rock-and-roller,” Wolff advised Fortune. “I feel it’s a bit unfair to say they’re all the identical, that Gen Zs are all the identical.”
“It’s in regards to the human, about their personalities, about their strengths and weaknesses,” he added. “I actually get pleasure from working with both of them.”
Gen Z has developed a nasty rap within the office, even deemed “unemployable” by New York College Stern Faculty of Enterprise adjunct professor Suzy Welch. The era, which has weathered a world pandemic and unsteady economic system throughout their early life, has adopted the stereotype of being lazy and unmotivated, due to the rise of developments like quiet quitting and profession minimalism which have younger employees setting clearer boundaries between their private {and professional} lives.
However from Gen Z’s perspective, regardless of being the second most educated era behind solely millennials, younger employees face AI’s menace to the labor market and “youngist” prejudices held amongst hiring managers with preconceived notions in regards to the era.
Wolff’s recommendation for younger professionals
F1 drivers—numbering solely 20 within the sport and presently with a median age of 27—should not typical workers. However even working with younger elite athletes, Wolff believes everybody ought to take it somewhat simpler on the era.
“I consider that we mustn’t pressurize Gen Z a lot by, ‘You’ve bought to seek out your goal, your ardour, and work exhausting,’” he mentioned. “It’s necessary to grasp that whenever you’re younger, your curiosity can change, and so long as you give all of it you may have with enthusiasm, then there’s a reasonably good likelihood when it comes to success.”
F1 drivers usually start their racing careers within the single-digits, driving go-karts earlier than working their approach up the single-seat racing sequence, profitable sponsorship {dollars} and races. However committing to a profession earlier than one has even left grade faculty shouldn’t be the norm, Wolff mentioned.
“No person expects a 25-year-old to have discovered the final word objective or job,” he concluded. “It was in my end-of-20’s that I began to seek out out really what I needed.”
Wolff himself had a winding profession earlier than changing into prime brass for Mercedes’ F1 group. The 53-year-old CEO started a racing profession in 1992, then received his class within the Nürburgring 24 Hours, a touring automotive race, in 1994. However Wolff left racing that very same decade, founding funding firms Marchfifteen and Marchsixteen centered on know-how ventures. He purchased a stake within the Williams Formulation One Crew in 2009, becoming a member of its board of administrators earlier than changing into govt director of Mercedes’ F1 group in 2013. He’s the longest-tenured F1 group boss within the sport presently.
Wolff has gained a surge of followers within the U.S. on account of the rise of Formulation 1, due partly to the hit Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive, in addition to the Apple movie F1 launched earlier this 12 months.
“5 years in the past, no person would have stopped Toto Wolff on the road. Now folks stopped him on the road,” Werner Brell, CEO of autosport multimedia firm Motorsport Community, advised Fortune. “That’s clearly so America, so Hollywood. I feel to me, that’s an sudden end result of how the content material facet and the facet of the storytelling has improved the game.”
